I've been remiss and
sporadic with posting on this blog lately. My only explanation is that
summer happened: summer travel, summer camps, summer weather. I'm not
sure if I am happy or not that it will be coming to an end soon. School
starts in our world in three weeks.
Writing
on my second book "Popstars, Friends & Lovers" is the other thing
that has been too sporadic this summer. I am determined to hit my
October deadline, so I revised my end-of-summer schedule to include more
time for novel writing. In order to accomplish this, I will only be
blogging on Mondays. I still have a lot to share with my readers so I
don't want to let it go completely, but I need to dedicate more mornings
to MG and Steve.
After
a rocky start, I'm really happy with the direction things are going in
for my favorite couple/noncouple from "Burnouts, Geeks & Jesus
Freaks." Here's a sneak peek at chapter two - Steve after graduation and
after MG left him to go to New York. Enjoy and follow my progress on
social media with #♪☺♥.
**This excerpt and the novel are recommended for readers age 17 and older.**
Steve’s afternoons with Carrie were the highlight
of his week. Since his dad refused to get
a phone for their apartment (Don’t want
anyone to call me) he had to just hope he would see her pull up in Ben’s jeep
on Tuesdays and Thursdays at three.
They watched reruns together, she brought him
food from the restaurant where she worked, and being around her reminded him of
high school, and MG. There was no way to
justify how much he missed MG. She was
never really his girlfriend so she never broke up with him, but she left him
behind, just the same. Now she was in
New York, with her mom, chasing some dream of big money and a big life. And he
was here, hanging out with her best friend, clinging to the way he had felt
when he was around her.
His dad wandered into the kitchen, which could
easily be seen from the living room. He
and Steve worked the night shift together at Tricon, so he was just getting up
and, as usual, he hadn’t bothered to put pants on.
“Put some god-damned pants on,” Steve
yelled. He had to tell him this every
time Carrie was coming over.
“Why, that lil cutie comin over again?”
Steve glared at his dad. It almost seemed like he wanted Carrie to
catch him in his underwear. Like she’d be interested in some
sorry-assed, middle-aged man. Steve looked at his dad, slumped over the
door of the refrigerator, searching the contents for anything edible. He was tall, lean and lanky; just like
Steve. And like his son, he was also a
lot stronger than he looked. Steve had
seen him heft some seriously heavy boxes at the warehouse. But time and bad living was definitely taking
a toll on him. He had blotchy skin on
his face, some from too much sun, some old scars. His hair was starting to recede from his
forehead, particularly on the sides. And
he had the nastiest smoker’s hack when he woke up, like now. Coming up empty on his search of the fridge,
he scoured the cabinets, lungs rattling, working up to a vile-sounding coughing
fit.
Steve snubbed his own cigarette out in the overflowing
ashtray on the floor next to the couch, “Her name’s Carrie and she doesn’t want
to see you in your underwear.”
“How do you know? She smiled at me last time she
was here.”
Shit!
Sometimes his old man just drove him insane, maybe because they were too much
alike. At one point in time, Jim Shrader
was a charmer and a flirt and a ladies man.
Then he met Steve’s mom, his waterloo.
He fell hard for her and was actually thrilled when she got pregnant
their junior year of high school, the result being Steve’s older brother,
Tony. To this day he kinda wondered if
Tony really was his full brother. They
were nothing alike, in looks or personality.
He wondered if his mom had just decided Jim Shrader was most likely to
marry her. A marriage that lasted all of 10 months before she bolted, leaving
Jim with a newborn. The other thing
Steve never understood was why his dad took her back five years later, when she
had Steve then left again. His best
guess was that his mom was a drug addict and Jim thought he could save her, or
she was reformed briefly, or something like that.
Not that he would ever know those answers. Neither he nor Jim was much for talking. They were both so laid back they could be
home together for days and never say more than two words to each other. Yep, him and his dad, two mellow-assed saps
for women. It depressed the hell out of
him how much his life was starting to look like his dad’s.
Carrie knocked on the door. Steve pleaded with his eyes for his dad to go
in his room. Jim reluctantly
complied.
“They were out of chicken fried steak, so I got
you meatloaf.”
She spoiled him.
She went out of her way to do things to make him happy. With her boyfriend Ben away at basic
training, it was like she needed someone to dote on as much as he liked being
doted on, so it worked.
“Meatloaf’s great, thanks.” He held the door then
closed it behind her.
“I grabbed a bunch of plastic forks and knives
from the take-out bin too.”
The first time she showed up with a meal for him
they had to look under the couch for one of the three forks he and his dad
owned. It took a lot of hot water to get
the gunk off it. She had been bringing
plastic utensils ever since.
“Good idea.” He dropped his voice a little, “My
dad’s here and awake, so let’s just go in my room.”
Carrie set the bag containing his dinner on the
floor and plopped on his mattress, which sat on the floor. Her Swiss-themed uniform skirt poofed out in
a circle around her. Steve shut the
door, retrieved the bag of food and propped himself up against the wall,
sitting on his pillow, to eat his meatloaf.
“You will not believe what I heard today.” Carrie laid down, her head on his
out-stretched legs. This was something
new, touching each other - nothing sexual, just touching in some way, filling
the gaping affection void in both their lives.
“Rat-boy got busted.” Rat-boy was their nickname for a kid from
their class who, well, had a rat face.
He opened a pizza place right after graduation, but everyone knew it was
a front for his drug dealing.
“Fuckin’ moron, probably sold to a cop.”
Carrie smiled and nodded, “if he names names,
would you be in trouble?”
Steve popped another chunk of meatloaf in his
mouth and shook his head no. He never
bought from Rat boy because he was a stupid fuck who cheated his way through high
school. He doubted he’d changed much in the seven months since they
graduated.
Carrie rolled onto her back and picked at a torn
cuticle. Steve finished his dinner. He set the plate on the crate he used as a
side table, almost knocking the card off of it.
It was a graduation card from MG and her mom, the only one he got. He set the card upright again.
“Are you going out Friday night?” It would be New
Year’s Eve, 1999. People were going
crazy all over the place with big parties or fears of the world ending.
He shrugged.
“Party at Chuck’s house. I might
go. You?”
“Probably just stay at Casey’s and hang out with
her and Gina.” Carrie looked up at him
and smiled, “So tonight I’m gonna party like its 1999,” she sang. Steve chuckled softly and tugged at a tendril
of her hair that was lying across his knee.
He stretched and grabbed an ashtray with a half-smoked joint in it. He lit it, held the smoke in his lungs then
blew it away from Carrie.
“I definitely thought life after high school
would be more exciting than this, didn’t you?”
He shrugged.
“Is this what you want to be doing? Ten years
from now?”
He shook his head, “But I don’t have a fucking
clue what else I could do.” He thought
about his old man, 25 years at Tricon, hefting boxes, moving crates, night
after night.
“What do you say we just take off, start driving,
see where we end up?”
He smiled at her, “In what?”
She smirked, “Good point.” Neither of them owned a car. He used his brother’s motorcycle while Stony
was in jail and Carrie was using Ben’s jeep while he was in basic
training.
Carrie thought about asking him where he would
want to go, if they could just take off, but she pretty much already knew the
answer, New York.
Labels: #♪☺♥, #amwriting